"proof of heaven" is throwing me for a loop

if i ever write a book about this personal tragedy of mine i will call it: "i saved and killed him".
now, i just need more literary talent, better english vocabulary, and the discipline to write only on one thing every day.

it's been almost ten months now and i still cry almost every day. i have shed more tears in 2013 than i have in my entire life. although, i guess, that wasn't too hard to do .. i never was much of a cryer.

every night, before i turn off the light, i look at J's picture on my bedside table and i just cannot believe this reality of mine. it's like - all day i am hyper-aware that he is gone but at that moment, when i look at this photograph it is a new charge of disbelief, every night. i have tried to put the picture away but i can't _not_ have it there. it has to be there. i have managed to put his ashes into a less visible place in the other room, i have put away the photo collage from his funeral, and i have even donated most of his clothes. the latter was particularly hard. it took me several attempts and many tears to get it done. his towel still hangs in the bathroom and i am still sleeping on 'my' side of the bed but, i know, i have to deal with that at some point.

i've been reading "proof of heaven" by eben alexander, a neurosurgeon who had a near-death experience (NDE) that sounds like a bit like an acid trip, or .. how i would imagine an acid trip, given the fact that i have never tried any of that stuff. it's not that i wouldn't have tried (all my friends did) but i had an experience as a teenager that kept me away from anything but weed for the rest of my life so far. it was a guy talking to his darts that would come around the youth center. when i asked my older friends what was up with him, they told me that he was having occasional flash backs from too much drug use. i never fact-checked whether that's possible but i never touched a trip ever, out of fear that it would come back to haunt me later. i also was afraid of horror trips i couldn't escape. basically, i'm a control freak and this kind of loss of power freaked me out.

to return to the subject - eben alexander's book confirms a lot of notions i have read about before, especially (and most lately) from lorna byrne's book "a message from the angels", which took a long time and lots of open-mindedness to get into and absorb. however, if alexander's memories of what he experienced are true (i.e. not just an illusion created by his brain), then that would mean, all the inexplicable things that i have experienced in the time since J has passed are either hallucinations (which they were not) or they are not messages or signs placed in my path by J, for he is far, far away, in some happy, musical land of happy, completely oblivious to my (our) suffering about his death.

if i take lorna byrne's book, i would say, maybe these signs of comfort have all been given to me by my guardian angel ... my God .. it was _really_ hard to put these three words in writing.... my guardian angel. it sounds so crazy... but for a lot of people _believing in God_ sounds crazy ... and if i believe in God than believing in angels and guardian angels isn't crazy, it's part of the belief. lorna byrne's book changed my life, is all i can say. i see the world differently now but i am still hesitant to settle on a final theory on how this all works.

psychoanalytic aspirations

i'm not sure if i wrote about this already .. i need to devise a system to check such questions .. (ehr, i think, there is such a system...it's called tagging). stop talking to yourself.

so - it occurred to me that i seem to be reliving part of my father's history. after my parents divorced,  my younger brother and i stayed with my dad. it was his condition to consent to my mother's request for separation. she wanted to move away and go back to college. shortly after they split up, my father got together with a woman who turned out to be mentally unstable. she was extreme but she loved him deeply and, i know, he loved her the same way ... he told me so. i was 11 years old when they started seeing each other. at first, he tried to hide the relationship from us - kinda like what i did with my children, only that i hid the fact that J and I were an item (and not just friends) for years. this was possible because my kids were so young when we got together. i don't know why my father hid his relationship from us. i suppose, he felt like it doesn't set a good example. unmarried coupling. there was a tiny bit of that reasoning in my decision to take it slow but, mainly, I recognized how unstable J, and thus our relationship, was and I didn't want my children to think they could count on him only to be disappointed later.

but, my father wasn't as skilled at deceiving his kids as i was and soon gave up his charade; it was just too difficult to keep it up in the small apartment we were living in. his girlfriend could be the nicest lady one day and an absolute demon then next. come to think of it, maybe she was bipolar. i remember sitting at the kitchen table with her, eating my lunch. she was all dressed up, her hair and make-up was done, and then, out of nowhere, as she lights her cigarette and deeply inhales her first toke, she casually tells me that my father announced he is breaking up with her and that she will be going down to the station at 6 o'clock to throw herself in front of a train. she then continued to smoke her cigarette as if nothing happened while i searched for appropriate things to say in response.

my father is one of the most reasonable, most stable people i know - maybe it is just that opposites attract. i take after my father in the way i walk through life - always searching for balance and peace. the only difference is that i don't think i would have ever left J (which sort of contradicts my yearning for peace, i guess). i couldn't have done what my father did -- sacrifice his love for the sake of everyone else, first and foremost his children. "if she and i could live on an island together alone, we would have a perfect life" he used to say, "unfortunately, we don't live on an island, and i have children, friends, and a career."
i have to add to this that she was definitely much more unstable than J ever was. or maybe that is a biased statement, .. i don't know. it probably is. people in love. they just don't see what other people see.

my failure as a savior and other personal theories

I heard this story on NPR today - about a Marine veteran whose life was ruined by a BCD (bad conduct discharge) for behavior caused by PTSD. Earlier in the morning I heard a similar story, similarly upsetting.

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/11/250283871/after-discharge-upgrade-marine-finally-finds-a-reason-to-live

Anyway, before I get lost in how upsetting I find this whole BCD business (after all, they ruined their lives for the service and as a thank you they get a persona-non-grata label slapped on for behavior they wouldn't have exhibited, wouldn't it have been for the psychological damage the war inflicted upon them in the first place.) ... Ok, so now I got it out anyway. But, what I wanted to actually discuss was the relationship between this vet (Michael Hartnett) and his wife, Molly. It made me cry, for I completely identified with what she was saying. That she felt like she couldn't give up on him. She couldn't leave him like everybody else had. ... That is exactly how I felt ... so many times, when my reason was telling me to go, when everyone, including his own family was telling me to leave him, and I couldn't. I couldn't tell him to go and be done with him.

But, ultimately, I did tell him exactly that. I failed him.
If you aren't religious, you aren't going to understand what I'm about to say .. but, at that moment, I realized that, if the purpose of my unconditional love for this man had been to save him, then I had failed God. I failed. I couldn't do "my job".

I was crying as I listened to Molly speak, begging for forgiveness. In fact, the tears in my eyes now, as I am recounting these thoughts, are making it difficult to write.

I tell myself that J couldn't be saved. That he was ill and that I brought him as far as I could on this journey together. In the beginning, he was a full-blown drug addict, violent, criminal, having alienated his entire family and all his friends, living with the conviction that nobody loved him. In his drunkenness, I have heard him whisper it so many times. And, last but not least, of course, the complete lack of connection to his young daughter. All this changed in the time I spent with him. When he died, he knew I loved him (he must have known it), he knew his mother loved him, he had left his criminal street dealing days in the past, he graduated from Columbia, he started building his own business, he had built a beautiful relationship with his daughter, he had begun to repair his friendships, and, I think, he recovered his faith in a greater power. J was hyper-religious (a side-effect of the bi-polar disorder) but, I never was quite sure, whether he actually believed in God. I think, when the goodness returned to his life and he began rebuilding everything, his faith in humanity and divinity returned. The latter, of course, can only be a speculation. I know, there had been times during which he very much believed in God. In fact, he once told me a terrifying story that left me speechless. It was in the beginning .. during his worst drug use days ... after his divorce ... his life feeling like not worth living. He had taken a gun from one of his dealer friends and marched up to the park behind his house to end himself. He told me how he sat on a park bench, crying, sobbing, putting a gun to his own head when a man, completely dressed in white appeared in front of him to stop him. Commanded him to stop. I don't remember the exact details but I have written them down somewhere, I think. But, it doesn't matter. Point is, that J had it in him .. spirituality.

I once heard someone say that the whole purpose of your life is to have faith and experience love. I'm going to have to look this one up because I want to get this right verbatim, however, the essence of the quote is there. I think, J left this life having finally found both of these conditions, if they are conditions to allow us to pass. ... Oh my, I'm hopeless ... "allow us" to pass. ... Clearly, I still have a death wish. I feel guilty when I catch myself practically excited about my time of death. It would devastate my children. I must not die. For a long time, anyway. Until my daughters are grown, with children, independent, and it seems natural for me to go. Gosh .. I really don't want to live that long. .. But, who knows, I may change my mind so let me not put that thought out there. God knows what happened the last time I thought about death. I can't remember if I wrote about this, yet, ... but ...

... there was a moment in time ... not too far in the past ... that I thought to myself, very frustratedly, that I would never leave this guy; that he was the one for me - despite everything - and that my life was just going to be this roller-coaster and I'd better accept it, for this is what a bi-polar disorder (or whatever it was that was wrong with him) will bring with it. The only way this relationship will end is if one of you two dies. Literally, til death do us part, I thought to myself. I remember clearly, thinking exactly this ... and being annoyed and angry about this supposedly romantic notion, which was so utterly unromantic. Unconditional love isn't easy. It's f--in' hard and it's no-one's choice. It just happens.

Could I really have willed him to death? Let me just say that I am careful these days about what I put out "into the universe" as my new-agey friends call it. There is something about it. "The universe", or whatever dynamic this is which makes life happen, doesn't seem to distinguish between good and evil. It's whatever wave or direction you put yourself on .. or whatever wave you're included in .. if you think on a bigger scale. That's just a theory, of course. One of my many speculations about this thing called life.

out of the furnace

Spoiler alert -- if you haven't seen the movie, you may not want to read this entry.

So - I went to see "Out of The Furnace". I have always admired Christian Bale's acting. The film was well directed, maybe a little predictable and violent at times, but all in all, very well done. Woody Harrelson plays a really good villain.

I was wondering about this thirst for revenge and what good it does, for it will never bring that person you lost back to life. Then I pondered, whether finding out what really happened was a necessary part of closure, and that thought brought me to the question whether, one day, I would be ending up in extra therapy about this lack of closure.

Even though, I had my doubts about J's death, for he had died in an apartment full of people, who may have been partially responsible - one way or the other - I never found enough motivation to further investigate. I was entirely too overwhelmed by grief. Yes, it made me angry that the detectives were just labeling the case as 'no-foul play' because he seemed to be just another "hood-rat" in this place he should have never been at in the first place. To the DTs the true cause of his death probably didn't matter much and it was much easier to close the case with such a 'no-foul play' note.

But I saw the bruises and cuts all over him. On his face, his hands, his lips, .. they were subtle wounds - except maybe for the big bruise on his forehead. That wasn't subtle at all. But, the officials insisted. Natural death. .. As natural as someone's death can be with a system full of drugs and alcohol. Accidental overdose, the medical examiner speculated. J has abused substances in such high dosages in the past that he has awed the medics who have treated him. On more than one occasion have I heard a doctor tell me (or him) that they're not sure how he survived this level of intoxication. In other words, J was resilient. I remember being surprised at the confirmation of this when I read the autopsy report. His body had absolutely no damage from all the mistreatment he had given it over the years. Yes, the medical examiner said something about his heart not having appeared completely normal, but, I get the feeling that she just wanted to tell me something of comfort over the phone. Because, in the report (which one only receives 4 months after the actual autopsy), his heart is not described as abnormal. How could she remember such a small detail, ad hoc, months after the examination? She said his heart was a bit floppy on one side and didn't seem like the normal heart of a 36 year old. The report doesn't mention this detail so I'm not sure what to believe. All I know is that _nothing_ matters, not how he died, not if it was natural, not if anyone is to blame, nothing matters because none of these truths will ever bring him back and that is all I care about. I have lost him forever. His daughter has lost him forever. My children. His mother, his sisters, his friends ...

Christian Bale's character (Russell) hunts his brother's killer down until the very last moment of the movie. And when he shoots him in the head (a bit unbelievable for the type of character he played) the camera comes close to Russell so we can participate in this moment of relief (?) as he slowly and audibly exhales a big sigh of sad accomplishment.

therapeutic exercises

I thought about creating a book - for my own therapeutic purposes. A book that tells the story of this loss. And maybe, at the end, I can walk away. But, I'm a bit torn about that. I wonder, whether a book would be inappropriate. Maybe not if I just make this book for myself. 

In the first few months after his death, I wanted to tell my grief to the world (I guess, I still do) - back then, I actually contemplated an exhibit about his death. I had the whole thing visualized. It was going to be deeply personal. For example, there was going to be something like a little chamber, only fitting one person, that would hold the photograph I took when I first saw him in his casket a few days after he died. I was alone with him. I looked at him for so long and I wanted to capture this very last time that I was to see him. In this vision of a mini-shrine, I was going to cover the image with a cloth, one that had to be lifted by the viewer. It was meant to bring the person as close to that exact same spot I was standing at. On the closing day of the exhibit, I thought, I would discard of everything. Everything that makes me cry. His clothes, his books, his ashes... I was going to let him go - symbolically. But then I became afraid of this type of ultimatum for myself. What if I wasn't ready to let go at the end of that imagined exhibit? Anyway ... the exhibit idea turned into a book idea. A book that would instruct the reader to seek a place of silence before opening its pages. ... And now, I have reached the point at which I'm thinking, maybe I'll just make one copy.